Culture

Battle of the biennials

Contemporary-art shows compete for attention

With over 100 biennials around the world, international showcases for contemporary art are now so prolific, and come so rapidly, that they often seem more like major sporting events than exhibitions. In 2013 the 11th edition of the Sharjah Biennial opens in March, the 55th Venice Biennale starts in June, followed in September by the 13th Istanbul Biennial, the 12th Lyon Biennale and the fifth Moscow Biennale. And those are just the best-known of the biennials that will take place during the year.

For many cities biennials have become important sources of cultural pride, international recognition and tourism. Venues vie with each other for star curators and big-name artists. Biennials often commission artists to create lavish works and installations, giving rise to a kind of festival art that is usually monumentally scaled, elaborately produced and veering towards the spectacular. In turn, biennial-goers have come to expect as much and frequently compare notes as to which installation was the most impressive over the year. Only rarely are these commissions memorable. Yet the best biennials can still manage to be thoughtful and deeply moving, as the Sydney Biennale proved in 2012.

Among the most anticipated match-ups for 2013 are the talented and hyperkinetic chief curator of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Tokyo, Yuko Hasegawa, in Sharjah; the New Museum in New York’s peripatetic and gifted Massimiliano Gioni in Venice; and the respected independent Belgian curator Catherine de Zegher in Moscow. Ms de Zegher will be fresh from the 2012 Sydney Biennale, and Ms Hasegawa co-curated the 2010 Bienal de São Paulo. Mr Gioni is no stranger to Venice, having co-curated its 2003 Biennale. All of these curators will be seeking to find “meta-themes” and new artists to shape their shows and differentiate them from previous editions and each other. This is an increasingly difficult task, as the proliferation of biennials makes it almost impossible to come up with fresh ideas. Moreover, the number of artists capable of making a defining statement at a biennial is surprisingly small. But Ms Hasegawa and Ms de Zegher, in particular, have a laudable record of discovering new talent, and 39-year-old Mr Gioni is in touch with his generation’s most interesting artists.

Highly entertaining, but exhausting

If Venice is the grandfather of all biennials—it was founded in 1895 and is by far the oldest—Sharjah and Istanbul have emerged as two of the most consistently interesting. With its focus on the Middle East, Sharjah is one of the few major exhibitions regularly to explore the growing contemporary culture in a part of the world not usually associated with a vibrant artistic scene. The abrupt dismissal in 2011, however, of Jack Persekian, the respected director of the Sharjah Biennial, over the inclusion of an installation (subsequently removed) by the Algerian artist Mustapha Benfodil that dealt with victims of rape by religious extremists, has left a big question-mark over the degree to which this biennial can be free from censorship. Sheikha Hoor, the much-admired daughter of the emir of Sharjah, will oversee the 2013 biennial, but it remains to be seen whether she can restore confidence in the event and give Ms Hasegawa enough latitude to shine.

Istanbul has benefited over the years from the work of many talented curators. By concentrating on Turkey’s strategic location between Europe, Asia and the Middle East, they have made it the place to see the emerging talent from one of the world’s most important cultural crossroads. Given Turkey’s burgeoning wealth and influence, this year’s biennial promises to be a signal event. Its curator, Fulya Erdemci, the director of SKOR (Foundation for Art and Public Domain) in Amsterdam, is known for her sharp mind and rigorous thinking.

Among the lesser-known biennials that have proved interesting in the past, Mercosul in Brazil’s Porto Alegre is becoming a little rival to its more famous cousin in São Paulo (which took place in 2012). With a much smaller budget and venue, it offers a more relaxed and engaging encounter with artists drawn primarily from Latin America.

The battle of the biennials is proving to be highly entertaining, but exhausting. With almost non-stop travel to virtually every corner of the globe mandatory if the biennial-goer is to keep up with these events, plus endless amounts of reading and looking to stay abreast of what is happening, the year will be dauntingly busy.